The list, which is compiled by Inc. Magazine, ranks the fastest-growing private companies in America based on revenue growth over the past 3 years. In addition to making the overall Inc. 500 list at No. 180, we were also No. 17 in the Software industry and No. 18 in the Los Angeles area. Making the list is a huge achievement for us, particularly because the past few years have been so tough on the economy. Being able to join the ranks of past companies who have made the list such as Microsoft, Zappos, American Apparel and Oracle is pretty exciting.
If you're interested in checking out this year's full Inc. 500/5000 list, visit http://www.inc.com/inc5000.
Clearly identifying the overall approach to document management comes in the form of asking a few simple questions and finding the right place to store the documents.
Who needs the documents?
Anticipating before the document is stored who may need it gives the information purpose, since information is only good to those who can leverage it.
When and why will the documents be needed?
Knowing what the documents will be used for once they are accessed provides the necessary sub-division the documents will fall into so that they can be easily brought out again once the magic moment comes.
How do you keep your intranet fresh, so your employees continue to check back regularly for new announcements and resources? By making your intranet a living and interactive environment, with constantly refreshed and updated parts. One great way I've seen customers spruce up their intranet is with an image gallery from the latest company outing, conference or lunch-and-learn. This is not only a great way to add some flavor, but a great way to create engagement and a sense of community among your employees.
The easiest way to display your photo gallery on your intranet is to add an application block to your intranet's homepage.
All it takes is 5 easy steps:
1.) Upload Photos into the Workspace within their own Folder
2.) Edit the Workspace Homepage

3.) Select "Insert More" and select the "Folders and Documents" Application Block


- The average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year.
- The United States alone, which has less than 5% of the world's population, consumes 30% of the world's paper.
- The costs of using paper in the office can run 13 to 31 times the cost of purchasing the paper in the first place! (So, that ream of paper that you paid $5 for really could cost up to $155!)
- Citigroup, a large financial services company, determined that if each employee used double-sided copying to conserve just one sheet of paper each week, the firm would save $700,000 each year.
- Reducing paper use reduces greenhouse gases: 40 reams of paper is like 1.5 acres of pine forest absorbing carbon for a year.
The solution: Go Paperless
A paperless office lets you organize your files and documents online, thereby reducing clutter, waste and high paper costs.Central Desktop is one of the many collaboration solutions out there that help you set up a completely virtual office environment. Here are a few features within today's collaboration solutions that help achieve organization nirvana and eliminate the clutter and paper waste in your office.
- Files & Discussions - An area where one can keep their files and documents in a central file repository. You can keep your electronic MS Word, Excel and any number of files within this area and create a clean organized file structure to help with navigation and easy access to all your important files. Since it is centralized, any member can access the file without needing to dig through mounds of paper or shuffle through endless cabinets of files.
Central Desktop for Office is available in both free and premium versions. Both versions are available to ALL Central Desktop users regardless of plan level. The free version includes the ability to open, edit and save new documents directly from Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. The premium version adds additional features such as managing subscribers, adding comments, notifying subscribers, search and co-authoring. See the feature comparison matrix to learn more.
What Central Desktop users are saying:

Eric Golden - CEO, Equipois
See what Eric has to say about CD for Office
"Central Desktop for Office brings convenience and efficiency to a new level."
Alicia McCabe - Manager, Operation Frontline Massachusetts
August 16th, 10 am PST, or August 18th, 8 am PST.
You can also get started now by downloading Central Desktop for Office below!

Hi my name is Philip Snyder. You may remember me from other blog posts such as Files, Folders & Organization and Central Desktop's MVC. I've been working on the folder tree in Files & Discussions here at Central Desktop, giving you the best interface we can for browsing and managing your files. It is my goal to give you an interface that is intuitive, familiar, and easy to work with. Today I'm going to talk a little about an exciting feature in HTML5 that promises to make your life even easier!
First off, I should clear up that HTML5 is an "upgrade" to the aging HTML4 specification... there are various improvements and a large subset of new functionalities; some of which are still being formalized. This feature list includes support for audio and video streaming, native dragging and dropping of elements in the web page, and Canvas -- which is kind of like Microsoft Paint for web developers.
Drag and drop is fairly basic functionality that almost everyone uses on a daily basis locally on their computer. We thought that the new support for File Drag & Drop in HTML5 would be an excellent way to make our file and folder management behave even more like your local computer. The concept is that you should be able to drag files from your Windows Explorer or Mac Finder window directly into your Central Desktop folders and have them automatically upload.
Sounds great doesn't it? I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately, since HTML5 is still relatively new, almost every browser is either still implementing it or has various differences in implementation that make a web developer want to cry. To make matters more complicated, accessing file information is even newer than the HTML5 specification, which means that if I'm going to support all the browsers, I'll have to hack my way into the next decade to create a cross-browser library to support them all.
Well, that's where I started. After spending a decent amount of time attempting to get them all working, I have come down to 2 basic conclusions.
- Google Chrome is awesome!
- File Drag & Drop is just not ready for prime time yet.
Browser Implementation Issues
The following is a list of issues I have encountered:
Cross-Browser Issues
No recursive folder uploading -- as a matter of fact, no folder uploading at all. While this isn't a show stopper, it does seem kind of silly to allow a user to select a folder in the file upload input box if the browser won't send all the files inside that folder too.
Firefox 3.6.* Issues
This browser supports file drag and drop, however the implementation is quite possibly the worst ever conceived. In order to upload a file that the user dropped, we have to read the entire file into memory and then send it over Ajax to our servers. This works fine for drops of around 10MB. If you try that same operation with a 400MB file, forget it!
Firefox 4.* Issues
Beta
The Mozilla developers are quick ones -- they realized the problem with their previous implementation and have created a whole new way to implement drag and drop uploading. The FormData object is a new JavaScript object that allows a web developer to insert file uploads directly into an Ajax request without reading the files into memory first. I was really excited about this and promptly downloaded Firefox 4 which is in its 2nd beta. After playing around with it for less than 5 minutes, I strongly discourage you from trying it yet. My system became incredibly unstable and slow and development was a major pain due to lack of support for Firebug.
Chrome (latest)
This browser is by far the best in its implementation! Simple and straightforward, my only complaint here is that you can't upload a folder and its contents via drag and drop.
Safari 4.* & 5.*
Since Safari is built on top of WebKit just like Google Chrome, I expected it to work just as well. Wow, was I mistaken! I tried this in both Safari 4 and Safari 5. While dragging and dropping multiple files into the window works, Safari sends the first file multiple times, instead of sending all the files. Talk about a MAJOR bug. To make it even more interesting, if the user clicks on the drop location, they can select multiple files to upload using the standard file selection dialog -- and that works as expected! I can't wait for Safari to fix this issue.
Internet Explorer
To be honest, I haven't even bothered trying to do drag and drop uploads in Internet Explorer yet. Based on 15 years of experience, trying to support IE is a pain due to lack of good development tools and a non-conforming JavaScript engine. Since I haven't been able to get all the preferred browsers to play nice, I can't imagine Internet Explorer will be even close.
Non-profit organizations tend to be filled with people who are
drawn to the bigger picture, people who are committed to being a part
of something. Members of non-profit organizations are often grouped
into tiers by level of involvement in the organization, ranging from volunteers
to members of the board.
For board members, trying to manage the members of a non-profit
organization can be a daunting feat if you don't know where to begin.
Keeping each level of the organization apprised of what is expected of
them while maintaining an overview of what takes place overall is
really what people are looking for in terms of comprehensive member
management.
Over the years I have crossed paths with and been a part of a few
non-profit organizations, including two museums. Being exposed to the
inner-workings of these non-profits also exposed me to the common
gripes that spark up when it comes to managing members. A few of the
most common issues I saw pop-up over and over again are:
- Keeping track of who needs to know what
- Spending too much time on the organizing with little appreciation or application
- Losing information in the shuffle
- Re-inventing the wheel
Some tips to overcome these common non-profit hurdles are:
- Maintaining regular contact is one of the easiest ways to manage
members, and leads to better management of the entire organization.
- Providing readily available information is the second way an
organization can easily manage members by controlling how information
flows.
In this spirit, we've added a new solution exclusively for Intuit called "Central Desktop for Professional Services." This Intuit Workplace App was built for service businesses, such as independent consultants, contractors, CPAs, lawyers and QuickBooks ProAdvisors, who are looking for a virtual site to manage projects, share information & collaborate with clients. Central Desktop is also a part of Intuit's current "Work from Anywhere" campaign. From now until August 20, anyone who signs up for a free or premium version of Central Desktop for Professional Services on Intuit is entered in a sweepstakes to win a free Flip Cam! But the devil's in the details - the fine print also lists other ways to earn up to 10 entries in the sweepstakes. Here's the scoring mechanism for those of you competitive types:
- Get one sweepstakes entry for signing up for any app that's featured in the "Work from Anywhere" promotion (we suggest Central Desktop for Professional Services) :)
- Earn one entry for every time you log-in to the Workplace App
- For every person you "invite" into the Workplace App to collaborate with you, get one more sweepstakes entry!
For more information about Central Desktop for Professional Services, check out the video below:


